Google - Tag Archive

How Google’s Panda Algorithm is changing the web

15 Replies Colleen Simpson

On April 11, 2011 Google announced on it’s Webmaster Central Blog sweeping changes to it’s search index. In an effort to promote high quality websites and eliminate websites that have poor content the algorithm was adjusted. This adjustment incorporated “feedback signals” which are expected to help Google users find better search results.

What started out as something small

What was described by Amit Singhal, Google fellow, as a “small” update, affected only 2% of US queries has turned out to radical. CNET describes the Google’s algorithm as “radical” and reports the websites that have been affected by reduced rankings.

Great websites drop in ranking

The British Medical Journal, the Cult of Mac, and WikiHow all dropped in visibility. Considered to be reputable sources, and not content farm, these reduction in rank show the algorithm still needs some fine tuning. Other websites that might be considered content farms have been dropped as well.

Facebook, Yelp & Twitter rise in rankings

Websites to increase in ranking are Facebook, Twitter and Yelp. These websites moving up begs a question though. Facebook already has over 500 million active users, of which, 50% log in each day. Does this website really not already appear “high” enough in the search engine. In addition, social media is changing Google search results with the adoption of the “Plus One” on Google and “Likes” on Bing.

Facebook increase in rankings and wikiHow decrease in rankings

Local Searches Soar

Despite the rise of social media websites and some news sources, many poor websites have fallen in ranking, as was expected from this Panda Algorithm shift.

Local searches have significantly improved, however, due to this shift in the algorithm. Websites of companies that are popular in the United States (David’s Bridal, Barnes and Nobles, Walgreens) all appear prominently in the US search index, but not in the UK index. This shift paves the way for a greater index in international search engine results. Improving international search results is a significant win for Google’s index.

How to add an email subscription form to your blog

9 Replies Christopher Roberts

Earlier in the week, Wayne John from Southern California Web Development commented on how it would be great if you could subscribe via email to Technology Bloggers. This way you could read the latest and greatest content as an email, and then just visit the stuff that interests you to comment etc.

After a little puzzling I managed to enable FeedBurner’s email setting and add a subscribe widget to the sidebar.

Google FeedBurner LogoTo subscribe via email like many already have, please enter your email in the box on the sidebar, or even in the box below 🙂

Enter your email address to get free updates about new articles!

As this blog talks about WordPress, RSS feeds and stuff like that, I thought I might as well help other bloggers set up a similar system 🙂

What do I need for people to be able to subscribe via email?

Well first of all you need a feed. WordPress handles this nicely so that shouldn’t be too difficult! Second you need a feed manager. I use FeedBurner. It’s simple and easy to use. The problem with it at the moment is that it is really slow at updating, meaning that when I post an article at 2 in the afternoon, only 8 o’clock next morning does the feed update – for example. This isn’t a major issue for email subscription at the moment though.

How do I enable FeedBurner email subscriptions?

Click on the profile of the blog you want to enable emails for, then go to the ‘Publicize‘ tab. From here look down the sidebar and find ‘Email Subscriptions‘ – click that. You should then get a page looking a bit like the one in this picture.

Enable/Activate FeedBurner Email SubscriptionsThen click Activate!

You will then be taken to a page called ‘Subscription Management‘. Here is where you get your code! Now you can ether get the box code or get the code which links to the subscription page. I chose to have a box, but you take your pick. Add the code to your site/blog and hey presto! Test it out yourself if you like, but the code should work and your readers should now be able to subscribe to your blog via email.

Can I customise the FeedBurner code?

Yes – to a degree. I am not 100% sure what Google’s policy is on modifying the code, but I imagine they are okay with it. My default code would make Technology Bloggers ‘subscribe box’ look like this

Enter your email address: 

Delivered by FeedBurner

but my modifications make a much smother (I think so anyway) this

Enter your email address to get free updates about new articles!

Happy subscribing and happy creating readers and bloggers 🙂